The Jealous One

by Celia Fremlin

  ‘I’ve looked. There’s nothing,’ said Geoffrey flatly: and then ‘Well, I don’t know, I was only looking round quickly, of course. I might have missed something. You go, Rosamund, would you? You’ll have more idea what to look for. I don’t want both of us to be gone at once, she might ring up here.’

  Again Rosamund was touched, in spite of herself, by the way Geoffrey was treating her as a partner in anxiety; and a respected partner, too, to judge by that ‘You’ll have more idea what to look for.’ It made her feel stronger, less dizzy, the sort of person who could easily walk across a room and down some stairs. Her questing toes encountered the shoes at last, and she slipped her feet into them unobtrusively, without looking down, for fear of drawing Geoffrey’s attention to her actions. Not that there seemed to be much risk of this, he was still frowning, deeply preoccupied.

  ‘How do I get in—have you the key?’ she asked, ready, now, for the little expedition. ‘Or did you leave the door unlocked?’

  ‘She left the door unlocked,’ said Geoffrey, the anxiety wiped momentarily from his face by a look of amused, reminiscent affection. ‘You know what she is—so trusting and happy-go-lucky!’

  He talks as if she’s still alive! flashed through Rosamund’s mind for one absurd, inexplicable moment. Then reason and common sense returned, and she thrust away the fantastic implications of the thought. She prepared, instead, to control the familiar surge of anger she was bound to feel at that ‘trusting and happy-go-lucky’.

  But it didn’t come. Was she too weak with fever to be capable of any strong emotion? But it didn’t feel like weakness at all—quite the reverse. What was the feeling … this queer new awareness of power? As if she could afford, now, to be generous about Lindy because she had up her sleeve some strange and terrible trump card …?

  What absurd tricks her mind was playing her tonight! I must be nearly delirious, she reflected, not without a touch of pride. Perhaps her temperature was even higher now—104°, perhaps, or even 105°? She wished she could take it again, just to satisfy her curiosity, but of course she couldn’t possibly, not with Geoffrey standing there, waiting for her to set off to Lindy’s on her errand. Cautiously, but trying hard to seem just as usual, she began to negotiate the steep incline of the stairs.

  The french windows at the back of Lindy’s house opened at a push, as Geoffrey had said they would; and for a full minute Rosamund stood quite still on the threshold of the pitch dark room, smelling the Lindy smell. Newly-watered plants in their good earth; polish; and the faint exotic smell that might be almost anything from expensive chocolates to fresh flowers, and yet was always the same.

  The darkness hung round her, chilling and yet somehow protective, and she felt a curious unwillingness to move. It seemed easier just to stand here, and concentrate on planning, in an absurdly laboured and painstaking fashion, the perfectly simple actions that she needed to perform. Feel her way across to the door. Find the light switch. Turn on the light. Look around by the telephone—on the mantelpiece—on the hall table—anywhere where Lindy might have propped a note for her sister to find when she came in.

  And those are the only sort of places we’re entitled to look in for tonight, Rosamund found herself thinking. By tomorrow, of course, or the next day, when she still isn’t back, we’ll be searching through her desk, reading her letters, sorting out her papers for clues…. Suddenly the implications of her thoughts hit her. Why was she assuming, with such unquestioning certainty, that Lindy had really vanished? Absolutely all that had happened so far was that Lindy had for some reason failed to keep an appointment: was this a sufficient reason for supposing that they had some tragic mystery on their hands?

  I must be half dreaming still, Rosamund told herself, forcing herself into movement, action; forcing herself to discipline her racing thoughts. Slowly, cautiously, balancing herself by one hand or the other against such shadowed, anonymous bits of furniture as loomed close, Rosamund began to move across the room towards the door, her footsteps almost silent on the carpet, her breath shallow as she picked her slow way through the blackness.

  A sudden burst of movement, a rush of hurtling, indescribable sound brought her to a standstill with a gasp of terror; and then her terror disintegrated into shaky laughter and a thumping heart as volley after volley of ferocious yapping filled the darkness, echoing back and forth off the walls seeming to come from all directions at once, so that it was hard to know where to step not to fall over her vociferous little opponent.

  But it was all right. Shang Low—whose talents were in some directions not so very different from his mistress’s—must have managed to combine this display of reckless ferocity with a certain number of very sensible precautions against being trodden on, for Rosamund managed to cross the last half of the room and turn on the light without touching him at all. As she turned to face him in the reassuring blaze of light, the infuriated little creature seemed to calm down a little. He was still barking, but some of the shrillness of outrage had subsided. As Rosamund moved towards him, holding out her hand in specious friendship, he backed away, the barks subsiding to a sort of high-pitched scolding, and then to a peevish, intermittent growl, such as he had often favoured her with in the past.

  He was still suspicious, of course, and rightly so. He followed her, not a foot behind, from door to telephone, from telephone to mantelpiece, from mantelpiece to hall table. A blank having been drawn in all these places, the two with one accord turned to look at each other, as if to say: What next?

  The kitchen, of course, was a possibility. One might very reasonably leave a note on the kitchen table with a fair certainty of it being seen; so Rosamund, followed by her baleful little bodyguard, proceeded thither. But to no purpose; there was no note in sight. Nor had anything been left cooking, or soaking, or drying up, to suggest some unforeseen delay in the cook’s return. Everything was tidy as always, but not with that deathly tidiness which means that the owner has really left home. After a long, thoughtful survey, Rosamund and Shang Low moved away, to stand and think once more in the hall.

  Upstairs, perhaps? Rosamund remembered that occasionally, when Peter was very late, she would pin to his pillow the note reminding him about his clean shirt, or his dentist appointment, or whatever. Perhaps Lindy and her sister followed the same custom?

  She turned towards the stairs.

  She had thought that she must already have witnessed the ultimate of Shang Low’s potential as a guard dog; but nothing she had ever experienced or imagined could compare with the paroxysms of outrage and fury into which this small movement of hers threw him. He flung himself to the foot of the stairs, and with eyes popping, teeth bared, prepared to bar her path with every ounce of the strength and fury so tightly packed in his small, trembling body.

  It was this pathetic smallness of his body, in contrast to the hugeness of his outrage, that made Rosamund pause. She hadn’t the heart to break down his miniature but so gallant defence—a tiny Horatius guarding his great bridge all alone. Indeed, she really hadn’t quite the courage, either: his fury was quite frightening, when you stood face to face with it like this. What was it all about, anyway? What was there upstairs that he must preserve from her with his very life?

  Suddenly she felt too tired to bother. Her head ached too much. What was the point, anyway? Eileen would soon be home and could go and look; why, Lindy herself might be back any moment now. One way or another, everything would be explained in due course. What were they all making such a fuss about? Every minute she was finding it harder and harder to remember.

  CHAPTER XIII

  When she got home, Geoffrey was pacing about the sitting room. He looked up eagerly.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Well, there might have been something upstairs, but I couldn’t go and look—Shang Low wouldn’t let me. He just went mad, barking and snarling, when I tried to go up the stairs, so I gave up.’

  Geoffrey smiled briefly, not really listening.

  �
��Oh, well.’ He paused in his pacing, frowned, and slowly lowered himself on to the sofa, as though to think better in a sitting position.

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ he said, ‘whether, possibly, there’s been some sort of muddle about the time? That would explain everything. Though I did tell her, most clearly, that it was my late evening, and I wouldn’t be able to meet her till after eight…. I wonder if she rang from home …? Did you say you didn’t see her at all today, Rosamund? Not this morning, or any time? Or hear her going out?’

  Again the throbbing, the aching in her head when she tried to concentrate her thoughts. Had she seen Lindy? Well, of course she had, at that meeting at Norah’s…. But that was yesterday, wasn’t it, not today…? Again confusion swept her thoughts, whirling them this way and that like a high wind. Sleeping all the afternoon got you so confused….

  ‘It is Tuesday, isn’t it?’ she asked Geoffrey. Then, seeing his expression, she hastily added: ‘I’m sorry—I’m being stupid. It’s just that I’m so sleepy….’

  It was not exactly impatience that she saw clouding his face now; more a sort of withdrawal. She knew that he was hurt that she could just simply feel sleepy while he was still so anxious. By her ill-judged excuse she had destroyed for them that tentative sense of comradeship in anxiety that had so moved her a little while ago.

  ‘Yes, it’s Tuesday,’ he said, chilly and patient again. ‘Do try to be a help, darling. You can’t really be as sleepy as all that. It’s only half past ten.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Just let me think a minute. I’ve been doing so many things today, I have to try and remember….’

  What things? Had she done anything at all? Well, of course she had. She’d washed up breakfast, tidied the house, got ready for Norah’s coffee morning…. No, that was yesterday, Monday: she must try to keep it clear. Well, then, it must have been something else today … what did she usually do on Tuesdays?

  Shopping? No, she hadn’t gone shopping today, she felt sure…. No, of course she hadn’t; she began to remember now, the fog had looked so thick, and her throat had been hurting…. Yes, that’s right! That’s how she’d spent the day—she’d been ill.

  But what to tell Geoffrey? She couldn’t—wouldn’t—plead illness at a time like this, particularly with him looking so aloof and peremptory, simply wanting facts out of her. Brief, relevant facts, to help him to find Lindy. But he won’t find her, gloated the evil little voice inside her: and somehow the fighting down of this little voice restored courage and clarity.

  ‘Well, I didn’t go out at all, anyway,’ she said confidently, feeling that this, at least, was the truth. ‘I was doing things about the house all day—you know. Tidying, washing—things like that.’ She moved over the fireplace and sank into a chair facing her husband. It was an effort not to close her eyes, so great was the relief of sitting down.

  She became aware of his eyes moving down her out-sretched legs.

  ‘Were you looking round the garden as well as the house, when you went over to Lindy’s just now?’ he asked curiously; and Rosamund, startled, followed the line of his gaze. Her nearly new black court shoes were coated with mud—thick, heavy, half-dried mud, with bits of grass blades — bedded in it. A sharp, agonised sense of—something—passed through her head like a sudden pain, vanished before she could grasp it, and left her as puzzled as Geoffrey. They both stared at the shoes in equal bewilderment.

  ‘No. No, of course I didn’t,’ said Rosamund, utterly baffled. ‘I just went along the side path and across the bit of concrete by the french window. I can’t think how they got like that.’ She stared at the two muddy feet in a concentrated yet unfocussed way until they seemed no longer to be her own. They seemed to swell, to shrink, to glide away to an immense distance and then come scudding back to fit on to her legs again. Her legs, yes, she mustn’t lose track of whose legs they were that had been tramping through unknown mud to some unknown destination. But what on earth was Geoffrey thinking of this long silence …?

  But it could only have been going on for a second or two, after all. As she glanced at him, she saw that he had stopped looking at her feet, had given up the problem.

  ‘Oh, well…’ he glanced at his watch, his mind moving restlessly forward. ‘Eileen should be here soon now, I should think … she said an hour or so….’ He got up, moved over to the window, and gazed for a long minute past the heavy curtain, carelessly thrust aside, into the street.

  ‘The fog’s definitely lifting,’ he announced, muffled, over his shoulder. ‘If she was held up anywhere by fog, she should be clear now….’ Rosamund, from the other side of the room, was aware of his eyes piercing and probing through the lessening obscurity, trying to force out of it the familiar, long-awaited figure. She could feel, locked inside him, waiting to leap forth, the smile, the wave, the rushing to the front door….

  I ought to tell him, she thought. It’s not fair to let him go on waiting and hoping like this … and in the same instant realised that this thought was nonsensical. For she had nothing to tell. She knew no more than he did—less, in fact, for he, not she, had been the last one to have seen Lindy, the last one to have spoken to her.

  ‘I suppose it was she who rang you up?’ she heard herself asking; and wondered whatever could have put so idiotic an idea in her mind.

  His head jerked back from behind the curtain. He stared at her.

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Who else could it have been?’

  He might well ask. Rosamund herself was wondering what she could possibly have meant. But she must go through with it now, think of something vaguely sensible, or else simply admit that she was light-headed with fever and be done with it. She thought of the dutifully-repressed annoyance with which he would greet such news at just this juncture: the clumsy, agonising attempts at a display of sympathy and concern at this addition—or rather interruption—to his worries. No, she couldn’t face it.

  ‘Who else could it have been?’ he repeated.

  ‘Well——’ Rosamund thought quickly—‘It only just crossed my mind, but supposing Eileen—after all, they are sisters, their voices may sound quite alike on the telephone. If she wanted to ask your advice about something, and took for granted you recognised her voice and so didn’t bother to say who she was—could it have been that? After all, she might easily be wanting advice about her problems. You know—Basil and everything.’

  You could see that for one second Geoffrey was considering this bizarre possibility. But the flaws were glaring and obvious.

  ‘Then why wouldn’t she have said so, when I rang her up just now? Of course it wasn’t her! Apart from the fact that she didn’t turn up either…. It wouldn’t explain anything whatever!’

  No, it wouldn’t. The snub—if snub you could call it from so anxious a man—was well deserved. Rosamund lapsed into silence, slumped deeper into her chair, and sensed rather than saw Geoffrey resuming his vigil behind the curtain.

  She must have dozed off a little, for the next thing she knew Eileen was standing in the middle of the room, her pale hair glistening with damp and her face pinched with cold. She must have only just arrived, for she was still wearing a white belted mackintosh, and her whole presence still radiated that disruptive sense of outdoors suddenly brought in. But already she and Geoffrey were talking hard, both at once, as it seemed to Rosamund’s half-awakened senses.

  ‘No, Geoffrey, really, I don’t know a thing!’ Eileen was assuring him. ‘She didn’t tell me she was going to ring you up, or meet you, or anything. I’ve just no idea what it could be about.’

  ‘And she hadn’t told you anything about being worried? I mean—quite apart from whether she meant to consult me or not—was there anything you know of that she could have been worrying about?’

  There was a tiny pause. Then Eileen laughed, a slightly forced sound.

  ‘Can one ever say, of anyone, that there is nothing they could be worrying about? All I can say is, I don’t know of anything in particu
lar, just now.’

  She had the defensive look that she so often wore when Lindy was talking at her, teasing her about her orderliness or her sobriety. She looked uncomfortable, too, standing there in her mackintosh, as if about to go at any moment. Rosamund roused herself.

  ‘Do sit down, Eileen,’ she urged. ‘Geoffrey, take her coat, will you?’—and after the little disturbance was over, and they were all seated, she told Eileen, a little apologetically, how she had been trespassing around hers and Lindy’s house that evening.

  ‘Though I must say Shang Low did heroic service in stopping me taking any liberties. I wouldn’t like to be a burglar in your place, Eileen! Do you know, he just wouldn’t let me set foot on the stairs. Anybody’d think you kept the Crown Jewels up there, or something!’

  Eileen looked startled for a moment.

  ‘Oh. Yes, well, he’s like that,’ she explained. ‘He doesn’t mind people in the places where he’s accustomed to see them; it’s only if they suddenly do something that they don’t usually do, like you going upstairs. I expect you’ve never been upstairs in our house before, and that’s why——Incidentally, why did you go up? What did you think you’d find?’

  Eileen’s voice had changed, become quite sharp. Rosamund, in some confusion, explained her idea about the note on the bed.

  ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ Eileen seemed mollified. ‘No, Lindy would never have left a note there. She wouldn’t have left a note at all, actually. She wouldn’t expect me to be anxious, just not finding her in. We both go in and out as we please.’